tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 22 09:16:47 1994
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Re: Duj pIm
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' [email protected] jay'?
=>I said, "instinct" in the sense that we're born with it. That's all I
=meant,
=>and I didn't mean to compare the language faculty (or whatever you want to
=>call it) to a baby's rooting. My use of the term stemmed from someone's
=>claim that language "instincts" are based on experience, a rather impossible
=>situation no matter what linguistic theories you subscribe to.
Um, you wouldn't be a functionalist then?
=From all this discussion, I have one question that I believe may also occupy
=the minds of several others here, altho some may not be as occupied by this
=question as I am now.
=What exactly causes us to disagree, if it isn't our differences in linguistic
=experience?
Well, that'd sort of be my point as well. To clarify: there are two major
schools of linguistics at the moment; each school tends to think the other
is a waste of time, and they don't communicate between each other two well,
although I suspect ultimately they do need each other. The majority school
(at least in the US) is the formalists; it includes the Chomskian tradition.
These linguists seek to explain language as a formal system, and are
sympathetic to positing a language organ genetically determined in the brain;
languages are different, because a baby's brain selects 'switch' (parameter)
positions when it hears a language, and works out what goes where.
I'm with the functionalists, who prefer to think of language not as a formal
system, but as a communicative resource. In particular, we seek to explain
particular features of language, not in terms of genetics and parameters,
but in terms of how a linguistic form best communicates a meaning. As a result,
we tend to think less of an independent language organ, and more of how
language fits into the patterns of cognition in general. We also
explain linguistic change, not in terms of formal parameter alteration, but
in terms of alternative expressions 'competing', alternative communicative
motivations for expressions conflicting, and so on. Because they don't
subscribe to formal theories, functionalists are more sympathetic to
statistical linguistics, and fuzzy-logical views of grammar. (E.g. they will
admit shades of grey between 'noun' and 'verb').
(This, incidentally, is why Krankor's argumentation on the basis of 'rintaH'
in HolQeD 3:2 is so shaky. He does admit it's shaky, but as far as I'm
concerned, it's as shaky as anything Proechel ever came up with. rIntaH
cannot be argued on as a sentence-as-subject construct, whatever chapter
it appears under, because it's clearly undergoing grammaticalisation (my
PhD topic! :) ) --- it's shifting from verb to grammatical particle. As a
result, rIntaH may tell us a lot about Klingon syntax 500 years ago, when
it was still an independent verb which may have been functioning as a
sentence-as-subject construct. But the same holds for verb-noun compounds
like jolpa': they don't really say anything about *contemporary* Klingon
syntax.)
It took me a very long time, but I've finally realised what it is about
languages like Klingon that fascinates me, and got me into linguistics:
the people making decisions about how to say what in these new languages
are doing nothing but folk functionalism. The decisions on "the ship in
which he travelled", on omitting perfectives in narrative, on rejecting
nominalisations, are all such decisions. They are motivated by a functionalist
understanding of language --- that it should avoid redundancy, that possible
ambiguities can be ruled out in practice, that certain constructs 'sound'
better, and so on.
These functionalist instincts are partly gut feelings, and partly intellectual.
Experience with other languages helps. But what ultimately divides Proechel
and others, or me and others, or charghwI' and others, is conscious
intellectual, linguistics-motivated decision.
In short, I think Guido#1 is right yet again :) .
--
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne. [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected]
AND MOVING SOON TO: [email protected]